Forget About the Human Experience: Social Business Failure #13

Disney got the human experience right.  From the moment you walk up to Disneyland, you are in another world.  The environment is set to walk you through an experience.  From the layout of the streets, to the paths you walk, to the music, sights and colors.  There is a story behind it all and you are led fluidly from one experience to another.

Contrast this with a discussion I have had many times…

Me: “When employees log in to their computers, they should be able to open up this tool and automatically be logged in.”

Them: “We can’t do this. It is against policy.

“If we don’t, they won’t use it.  If it is a pain to get to, they won’t use it.”

“But policy says, ‘blah blah blah.’  This is something we need to follow.  If they want to use the tool, they will follow these policies.”

“But the policies are based off of out dated assumptions.  The simple fact is, if it is not super easy to get to, adoption will suffer.  So we have a choice, either we change or ignore the policy or we abandon the effort.  Which is more important?”

This is one of many, many instances I have run across where we bang our head against the wall because what people want and what the company is willing to give them are very different.  We have all seen programs, incentives and tools go untouched simply because they don’t take the humans into account.

With software tools, we often talk about UX – or User eXperience.  When the user steps up to the tool, what kind of an experience will they have?

In a conversation on Google+, Rachel Happe and I came up with a new twist on UX, “HX  = Human eXperience, the art of creating, optimizing and enhancing experiences around ‘organizational identity, values and goals.'”

When we focus on the human and their relationship to the organization, everything else works out because we are focusing on that which changes – and we expect it.  In contrast, if we focus on the organization (something we try to optimize and keep steady) and try to mold the humans into it we find that it backfires.

In the end, what do we learn?  Remember the humans. Rather than viewing them as a necessary part of the organization, see them as the organization itself.